Overclocking

Overclocking results listed in this section are achieved with the default fan, power, and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. We choose this approach as it is the most realistic scenario for most users.

Every sample overclocks differently, which is why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.



Unlike nearly all other Turing cards, which sit in their power limit all the time, the Zotac RTX 2080 AMP Extreme has a power limit that's high enough for the card to always run in its highest clock state. This makes overclocking easier, because you can just dial in maximum frequencies like before, without having to worry about the power limit reducing the clocks on you.

With Turing, NVIDIA provides an automated way to scan for the maximum stable overclock through software, which tests each point on the voltage-frequency curve manually. While the end result was stable, performance was a few percent lower than what we had achieved with manual overclocking.

With manual overclocking, maximum overclock of our sample is 2155 MHz on the memory (20% overclock) and +55 MHz to the GPU's base clock, which increases maximum Boost from 2040 MHz to 2085 MHz (2% overclock).

Important: Each GPU (including each GPU of the same make and model) will overclock slightly
differently based on random production variances. This table just serves to provide a list of typical
overclocks for similar cards, determined during TPU review.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies, we ran a quick test of Unigine Heaven to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 6.1%.

Power Limits

All NVIDIA graphics cards have a power limit defined in the BIOS, which limits power draw by adjusting Boost frequencies accordingly. A second limit exists that defines the maximum TDP adjustment limit for user overclocking; i.e., how far the power slider will go. In the second chart, the (+xx%) value lists the percentage increase from the tested card's default power limit to the highest manual setting available—the slider's adjustment range.